Beverley Turner talks about her husband James Cracknell's recovery from a
fractured skull following a road accident while he was attempting to set a
new endurance record.

When Beverley Turner walked into the intensive care unit seven days ago and saw her husband, adventurer and Olympic rowing champion James Cracknell breathing with the aid of a ventilator, wired up to bleeping monitors, multiple drips in his arm, her stomach lurched and went into freefall.

“Ironically I’d spent years worrying that James would come a cropper in a reckless, extreme adventure and plunge down an icy crevasse in some remote wilderness, but it was a road traffic accident in the United States that had left him with a fractured skull and damage to his brain,” says Turner ruefully, speaking from her hotel in Arizona. “It’s the sort of thing that could have happened to any of us, anywhere.”

Cracknell, 38, had been attempting to break an endurance record by crossing from Los Angeles to New York in 16 days, and was being filmed by the Discovery Channel as he ran, swam, rowed and cycled across the country.

But early last Tuesday, at around 5.30am, he’d been on his bike just outside the city of Winslow, Arizona, covering the only stretch of road where the crew weren’t able to film. Despite the fact Cracknell had a warning strobe light on the back of his bike to make him extra visible to other vehicles, a truck appears to have hit him from behind.

“The doctors say his cycling helmet – which was shorn in two with the impact – saved his life and that it was a miracle he didn’t fracture his spine or any other bone, although the bruising is horrendous,” says Telegraph writer Turner, 36.

Related Articles

Her husband was taken by ambulance to a local hospital and then airlifted to a main hospital in Phoenix where he was admitted to intensive care and heavily sedated.

“Luckily, I had been out supporting James a couple of days previously and was in Las Vegas, getting ready to fly back to Britain, when the phone rang in my hotel. Before I’d even picked up the receiver, I knew something was wrong,” recalls Turner.

“One of James’s trainers told me he’d been in an accident and I needed to get to the hospital immediately. My first thought was for the children; Croyde, aged six and 16-month old Kiki were back in London with my mother and I felt sick at the prospect of telling them that something had happened to Daddy.”

Turner went into autopilot, packing her bags, getting into her hire car and heading to the airport where she caught a flight to Phoenix. “I really can’t remember the journey because I was concentrating on trying not to think of the worst case scenario, namely that I would arrive at the hospital and have to make a nightmarish life-or-death decision about James’s quality of life and whether any machines keeping him alive would need to be turned off,” she says.

“But by the time I arrived at James’s bedside, numerous Cat and MRSI scans had been carried out and the doctors had assessed his condition – and I thank God that the prognosis was as good as it could have been under the circumstances.”

Cracknell was – and remains – very poorly. Although not medically unconscious, he appeared to be; his eyes were closed and when he wasn’t heavily sedated he was either very agitated or in a deep sleep.

“I was told that although he fractured his skull at the back, the brain injury is at the front, where his brain was catapulted forward as his helmet hit the road at high speed,” says Turner. “He feels so passionately about bike safety and had just bought a new Alpina bike helmet that sits lower on the back of the head. It took the blow far more effectively than a normal helmet and kept the damage to a minimum.

“All the same, he’s sustained what’s known as a contrecoup injury to his frontal lobe, with bleeding, bruising and swelling in the area that governs personality, decision making and motivation - all the characteristics that make James who he is.”

Cracknell’s parents flew out the day after the collision and, when the doctors explained that James’s behaviour might be impulsive for a while, his mother and Turner couldn’t help smiling and saying: “Well, no change there, then.”

“You have to find a way of lightening the mood and finding humour where you can,” says Turner, clearly exhausted by the strain of the past week. “Nurses still come in every half hour or so to check his vital signs, get him to squeeze their hands and ask him questions to gauge his condition, which he would usually answer with his eyes closed. When they said: 'Where are you?’ he might say Japan or Liverpool. At one point he was asked if he was all right and he announced he needed to buy four air tickets because he wanted 'to go loco down in Acapulco’, which made us laugh.”

Thanks to his extraordinary fitness levels, Cracknell was able to come off the ventilator after a day and leave the intensive care unit within three days for the neuro-trauma recovery ward. Although progress is painfully slow, the consultants say there’s no reason why he shouldn’t make a complete recovery – in time.

“We don’t know what timescale that will be, but within three to six months he should appear to be himself. Only those closest to him may be able to discern a subtle difference,” says Turner.

“It’s a fact of life that we all occasionally wish we could change our husband or wife’s annoying habits but, hand on heart, I can say I want James to stay exactly as he is and come back to me the same driven, focused, kind and loving husband I married.”

Since the accident, Cracknell has gradually been able to recognise the voices of his wife and parents and, if someone places a spoon in his hand, for example, he can eat cereal – but still with his eyes shut. Reports that he has been sitting up in bed are woefully wide of the mark.

“He is so fatigued that he generally falls asleep with exhaustion within moments of waking up,” reflects Turner. “It’s heartbreaking to hear him muttering that he’s 'let everyone down’, when all this has happened through no fault of his own. But that’s James through and through.”

The couple’s children are flying over to the US today but they still have no inkling of what has happened. “I’ll explain to Croyde that Daddy fell off his bike, and if James is more coherent, I’ll bring him to the hospital to see his father,” says Turner.

She describes herself as “overwhelmed” by the hundreds and hundreds of emails and texts offering help and support, which have been a great comfort. As well as close family members, James’s friend and fellow adventurer Ben Fogle interrupted his summer holiday in Austria to fly over and see him. Their planned 2,745-mile bike ride from Canada to Mexico, due to take place next month, has been postponed indefinitely.

“I’m not going to rush James’s recovery,” says Turner. “We have a long, hard road to travel, and I don’t know how long it will take, but I do know it will only be over the day James picks up his trainers again and goes for a run.”